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Paper Medical Records Become Popular Again?

[By Kellus Pruitt DDS]

Starting long ago, I warned that as more dental patients are notified of data breaches – some more than once – we are likely to witness an event mandate stakeholders said would never happen: A migration of patients to paper-based dentists.

Now, because of the rapidly escalating costs and liabilities, defiant, slow adopters of electronic dental records [EDRs] can not only expect to provide dental care at a lower cost than “paperless practices,” but patients are on course to learn that some dentists do not put their patients at risk of medical identity theft by putting identities on computers.

Just sit back and watch!

The Ponemon Institute

In February, the Ponemon Institute published  their “Fifth Annual Study on Medical Identity Theft.”

• http://medidfraud.org/2014-fifth-annual-study-on-medical-identity-theft/

 “Consumers expect healthcare providers to be proactive in preventing and detecting medical identity theft. Although many respondents are not confident in the security practices of their healthcare provider, 79 percent of respondents say it is important for healthcare providers to ensure the privacy of their health records. Forty-eight percent say they would consider changing healthcare providers if their medical records were lost or stolen. If such a breach occurred, 40 percent say prompt notification by the organization responsible for safeguarding this information is important.”

The Paper-Gold Standard? 

So if your patients start asking you not to put their identities – including medical records – on your computers, what will you do, Doc?

Since encryption is a non-starter in dentistry for solid, business reasons, and will make paperless practices even less competitive with paper-based, would you consider employing staff which knows how to use pegboard, ledger cards and lots of carbon paper (The gold standard of security)?

Or, would you prefer not to give up computerization, yet keep your patients safe?

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More:

• Socio Economic Status, Payment Reform and Medical Records
• Medical Records as Malpractice Defense
• The Horrific Waste & Dangers of Paper Medical Records?
• The Flaws of Electronic Records

Assessment

De-identification of primary electronic dental records is sounding better all the time. Am I right? If patients’ identities are not available, they cannot be hacked.

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OUR OTHER PRINT BOOKS AND RELATED INFORMATION SOURCES:

• PRACTICES: www.BusinessofMedicalPractice.com
• HOSPITALS: http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466558731
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• Dictionary of Health Economics and Finance
• Dictionary of Health Information Technology and Security
• Dictionary of Health Insurance and Managed Care

Filed under: Information Technology, Practice Management, Pruitt's Platform, Risk Management | Tagged: Are Dentists Satisfied with their EDRs?, D. Kellus Pruitt DDS, De-identification, digital medical records, eDRs | 5 Comments »